Guild Wars 2

2nd evening since Traffic management was removed, playing fine on BT infinity during peaktime, looks solid that it was the solution.

It’s hard to complete the achievements when all these ‘full’ overflows don’t have enough actively participating players to do what’s necessary.

Specifically ask to get the traffic management removed from your account, don’t get diverted or bullkittented or transfered, keep at them, ask for supervisors if necessary, don’t entertain any crap about it being your computer, or your hardware or your local exchange or having a ‘technician’ sent out to your location at your own expense etc.

I managed to get someone from the BT options team on 0800 800 150 to remove the traffic management from my account, it took a couple of days but now I am playing during prime and offtime just fine across a BT infinity connection tonight.

The 5th call of the last few weeks worked finally!

Primetime evening once again.

BT infinity fibre optic fast isp connection cannot even log a character in, game freezes and exits.
swap the cable over to the SKY isp hub which is much older adsl and no surprises…
Normal connection via sky.

Dear A-net, please care.

BT call centers in india will swear blind that no traffic management exists on BT accounts. The only way to get anywhere helpful with them is to force them to read their own page on the BT website confirming that traffic management is applied.

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/47278/~/traffic-management

Another evening of unplayable GW2 only lag. Really surprised Anet don’t care more that the largest ISP in the UK seems to be preventing their UK customers from using the game.

Saifon.9857:

Sickboy.2705:

Same with a mate of mine, BT Option 2 infinity – he’s on now and cannot play because of lag and it only happens at peak times. We were today and it was smooth, no issues. I’m on the same BT package as he is and I’ve no issues (we’re also on the same BT exchange)

We’ve tried a few things in house, but it’s clear the issue is not coming from local hardware or software.

Yeah.. I’m on the exact same option.. if you got this before feb 2013, then it will have network restrictions, however after feb 2013 it will not have network restrictions. BT will remove the network restrictions if you ring them, it took 48 hrs and then game is now fully playable at peak times.. I’m not sure policy of posting BT’s phone number on here, so if u pm me in game.. I can give you the BT options team phone number..

Go ahead and post the number, it could be useful info, particularly if it connects to anyone in the UK. I’ve spent 2hrs with call centers in India speaking to supervisors etc and I still can’t get anyone to admit any type of traffic shaping or network restrictions has ever existed, despite it being in writing on the BT website and openly admitted in the past.

Still unplayable, still needs fixing. Would help a lot if one of the Anet staff would respond they’re aware of the issue.

When TRION devs contacted BT about exactly the same symptoms in RIFT that action helped fix the issue within a few hours.

1. mesmer
2. elementalist
3. ranger

Complain to BT to get it fixed!

If you want to get BT to reclassify GW2 traffic properly (not as p2p sharing or whatever) and let it be playable peak time again, make some noise here: https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity-Speed-Connection/BT-throttling-online-games-guild-wars-2-all-the-sudden/m-p/1169162#M127605

But Anet devs can probably get a lot more traction than we can, and provide some crucial tech data for the BT team responsible.

I wish we were allowed enough characters to make a proper sentence as a thread title.

BT forum thread, if people want to get this issue resolved, make some noise… https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity-Speed-Connection/BT-throttling-online-games-guild-wars-2-all-the-sudden/m-p/1167486#M127353

Dear Anet, you need to be aware of this issue and ideally contact British Telecom ISP in the UK to resolve the problem that has been created in the last few days.

I’m playing via British Telecom ISP in the UK on their Infinity Unlimited package (option 2). Today, once again at 5pm GMT the game suddenly became unplayably lagged, with minutes of lag and the accompanying disconnects. Other internet traffic (e.g. youtube or lovefilm) works fine during the ‘gw2 only lag’. This has been going on for several days with peak times effectively throttled to nothing.

The reason I’m sure it’s throttling somewhere is because:

• happens each around start of prime time (17:00) and ends around end of prime time (23:00) etc
• it happened on 2 computers at same time,
• other internet useage working totally fine during the specific gw2 no traffic lag, e.g.g lovefilm or youtube or general surfing working fine during the GW2 specific lag
• connecting any of the computers via any hardware/router variation, cabled or wireless through the other (non-BT) internet connection produces a stable peak-time connection to GW2 without the crushing lag and disconnects, once it’s not through BT
• seen exactly these symptoms during the RIFT beta because of an IP / server change at rift putting them into BT’s p2p throttle blacklist

TRION (rift’s devs) had to contact BT to get themselves whitelisted out of the traffic management throttling blackhole during peak times.

It’s possible it’s not currently every BT package that this traffic management profile is being applied to, but BT is the largest ISP in the UK so it’s an issue worth solving to enable your UK playerbase to continue playing.

A tiny 8% cut to healing signet would only be a credible action if many other healing abilities across the other classes were getting a huge boost.

Total waste of both our time testing this P.o.S. and the dev time (design, test, ui, code, QA etc) that could have been spent on something useful. Also a waste of 25 skill points (if you don’t have loads of skills points spare).

Some of the downed states are 90% less useful than other classes downed states. It would be nice to see some real progress in this area.

Total overhaul required.

A-net need to separate the game modes and have proper balance teams for each.

In the present system it is simply inevitable that justifiable changes for 1 mode are all too often horrible changes for another mode.

3 separate balance teams are needed, albeit with overall co-ordinators at the top level, to keep the gameplay fairly similar in feel, but having the fine-tuned detail differences between the modes.

The problem MMO mechanics encounter time and time again in handling the ‘godhood’ of each player when they reach endgame arises because MMO’s keep making the same design choices to work with the problem of new content, boredom, gearflation and levels.

Release new challenges that can kill the current gods, so all gods are forced to grind up a treadmill to once again achieve godhood. Those challenges typically come in harder areas, new gear like ascended with long grinds, or more levels but they’re all the same effectively supplanting the current meta with vertical progression.

This has a number of key problems: *
you are effectively devaluing the achievements of people which breaks trust.
*players who paused have far less reason to return.
*old content becomes redundant content where the difficulty is all wrong.

Instead we should look at releasing new content challenges and areas where the current gods haven’t become gods yet, allowing players to make their characters endgame ready in one area easily, or in many areas if they have much playtime Imagine a new zone where you need to level up through a multitude of activities to reach endgame for that zone, without the levelling or the new gear or the new abilities have a huge detrimental affect on how each other area of the game plays, including current zones, wvw, crafting, economic/broker game goals and so on.

Stop negatively affecting existing content with worldwide serial linear and vertical powergrinds, instead offer parallel power progression where players choose to progress one path or ten paths as they wish, but can easily reach a reliable endgame level in a single path quite quickly.

Ascended gear is a classic example of a stagnant and uninspiring design route, it affects every aspect of openworld pve, fractals, events, dungeons, wvw, crafting, broker/economy etc.

Instead of the traditional limited vertical paths in series, think of progressing a single or many faction paths at once: to unlock access to tiers of new areas, better resists and damage to a factions foes, new combat skills and abilities to combat that factions foes, new additional traitlines for the faction.

Include improvements to the equipment system with tabs that auto-equip for relevant content to handle multiple progression paths. You could start in a small way by adding a talisman slot that expands out to show many slots allowing players to slot new progress as they make it, resistances, damages, abilities etc.

here’s the facts:

• Kits were balanced to exotics so that they would have the correct damage.
• Then ascended weapons were introduced.
• With ascended weapons in the game the playing field has changed and now kits are no longer functioning at the correct damage level.
• this issue will affect the bundles of several classes, but especially the engineers who use kits instead of weapons (as their weapon selection is tiny and the weapons are fairly niche/rubbish as well)

The pertinent question is: have the devs given any indication of when they are going to fix this.

I wish threads about mechanics corrections didn’t so often get somewhat derailed by people who simply cannot pass up any opportunity to stroke their own ego and claim that they’re personally so amazingly uber that they don’t need a level playing field.

here’s the facts:

• Kits were balanced to exotics so that they would have the correct damage.
• Then ascended weapons were introduced.
• With ascended weapons in the game the playing field has changed and now kits are no longer functioning at the correct damage level.

The pertinent question is: have the devs given any indication of when they are going to fix this.

Is there any game plan for fixing the 20+ engineer turret bugs? Most of which are a year and a half old. Also any plans for turrets sucking less?

Kits are balanced against exotics. Ascended and legendary vertical power creep has changed the playing field. Did we ever get any official response on when or if kits will get adjusted to the new playing field?

After having my progress and participation in a Temporary Story segment arbitrarily deleted halfway through a few times, I just don’t bother leaving wvw anymore which is a shame. LS feels like wasted dev time to me, disposable content that has no long term impact our game and our progression apart from new vertical power grinds.

Living story is what turned me off pve. Luckily I like wvw, but dislike that LS additions clearly are not made with any consideration of their impact to wvw. So LS content is to temporary to care about or do, and has a negative impact on the game mode I enjoy.

Plus I chose this game as it promised an alternative to vertical power grinds, man has that been a disappointing policy uturn.

Overall this makes current style LS content feel like the enemy.

Living story is a big turn off to me. Because it’s temporary, my progress in it is going to be arbitrarily deleted while I am halfway through it, completely eating my time for no purpose and annoying me no end.

Horizontal pve progression by new permanent zones, with flagging, keying, quests, drops, and faction builds to open more difficult parts of each zones. You don’t build power across al zones at once but individual zones as you chose to. (can bin the whole temporary living story content as far as I am concerned, it’s always in danger of being gone before I can complete it, so now I never bother)

Horizontal gear progression by: A new equipment slot for special resists, expands on click to display, multiple tabs each with 10 * 10 i.e. (100) slots. Each zone tab allows you to collect resistance and immunity to various boss and area special mechanics, abilities, drains, dots, charms, repeating stuns etc. Special skins and effects for unlocking deeper into whichever zone. Vanity looks combined with individual zone survival power progression.

Wvw horizontal progression: make it very very quick to get minimum setup like applied fortitude and guard leech, and one FULL set of ascended gear for one character to do a role, then make it progressively more like the current nightmare to gear up extra roles and characters.

Refocus story on dragons not random villains of the month, space pirates, clockwork robots and whatever.

Fix retaliation (post crit lifesteal/heal changes) so that hammertrains can be aoe’d without the ranged being forced to stack to try and heal the perma ret. Unstacked ranged should be the answer, but horribly designed retaliation mechanics and uptime prevent the natural counter from being possible.

I just want to actually get the horizontal progression we were promised instead of the horrible vertical power grind bs we got instead. Weapons and armour out dated because of ascended grind. Endless wxp grind. Insane legendary grind. Awful enforced crafting grinds with colossal gold farming needed for resources.

Return to the horizontal promises we bought this game (books gems etc) based on. 2 decades of mmo experience and gw2 is now one of the worst offenders for grind with all the ascended crap. I honestly preferred raiding schedules, in previous mmo’s, it was less work and far more enjoyable and didn’t force you to do so many areas of the game you might dislike.

P.S. It should be possible to gear for wvw by doing wvw, without big disadvantages, unavailable slots, stat penalties, or 50x longer timeframes. Fix it.

Well after a year and a half of spending all my time for gaming in gw2 wvw, I have ascended items in 3 slots on a character I now fancy a change from. Anet have done awful job in balancing reward to effort in wvw compared to pve modes. The prospect of getting gear (and wxp until they ever get around to account wide wxp) is just totally demotivating.

Anet have made an awful mess of making wvw a viable way of not having gear penalties in wvw. Raising a new character to keep the game interesting is totally undermined by the colossal amounts of grind added to the game over the last year and a half.

Gw2 bears no resemblance to the endgame not being based on vertical power grinds promises that attracted many to invest themselves in gw2 in the first place.

The cash required to raise multiple crafting skills is completely insane compared to wvw earnings.

There are many other MMO’s I could go to (or back to), start over from scratch, and earn a full set of no disadvantage pvp armour, by doing pvp, months and years quicker than the massive grind in gw2.

Gw2 wvw is very very grindy compared to other mmo’s. Doing a set raid schedule every week is much much less time intensive than all the different cash, crafting, living story, daily etc grinds and you have wxp grind on top to ruin it even further.

Boons ,healing, non aoe damage, all need better calculations for wvw loot.

Wvw lootbags should auto loot (no f key at all).

Wvw should have massively less grind.

Defending and scouting should have reward structures.

Rewards should be split by number of attackers vs number of defenders.

Bad wvw retaliation design is one of the primary causes of blobbing.

Most people who reroll for wvw usefulness, reroll to just a few classes/builds. This is poor balance, caused by not having a separate wvw balance team.

Straegen.2938:

Lots of things to complain about with Ascended but they are attainable from WvW play just not nearly as fast. IMO making a system that is ridiculously tedious, incredibly expensive and is based almost solely on grinding is a horrible design which to me is the real problem. Ascended should have been a milestone for long time players and not feel like a punishment. The forced crafting and the absurdly convoluted process is highly annoying.

Ascended should have been purchased via laurel and some other earned token (badges, dungeon tokens, etc). Simple, attainable without grind and rewarding.

While I agree with the bulk of your post, getting all of the right ascended weapons and armour for yourself just isn’t realistically attainable by wvw play. The crafted ones should be tradeable, and there should also be a wvw badge scheme, and laurels should be les of a bottleneck grind for wvw customers.

It’s failed design. Playing wvw should be a viable and realistic route for having zero stat disadvantage in wvw.

Mindless boon spam having a completely uneven affect on different classes and builds is a failure of only designing for tpvp or pve, and never applying large scale engagement experience to combat mechanics.

Wvw deserves it’s own balance team if anet is serious about keeping it’s playerbase when an alternative is released. Retribution in large scale, it’s uptime and it’s uneven affects and the on crit heal changes from a year ago, all should be part of the priority list along with mitigating changes to guardians and blasting light fields etc.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Kalan.9705:

E.g. if you do wvw you get exotic armour and weapons for wvw.
If you do pve you get ascended armour and weapons for wvw.

The only ascended weapon I have is the one I got from a WvW rank chest.

So, if you plan to get the right ascended weapons and armour for you from wvw play, don’t forget there is some time constraints: afterall in several billion years our sun will fry the planet earth and you probably won’t be done yet

I don’t really understand how retaliation is designed so poorly. It’s like no one on the design team learned anything from the past 2 decades of MMO damage shields mechanics. Or read any of the beta posts about mechanics without cooldowns, percentile returns or active play (not passive boon blasting, omg).

This isn’t a thread about how each person personally rates the importance of the many different advantages of the things obtainable outside of wvw.

Instead it’s a basic design principles discussion thread, if someone mainly does pve, should they have gear advantages inside wvw, over someone who did wvw instead? Should alternate game modes to wvw, reward better advantages inside wvw?

E.g. if you do wvw you get exotic armour and weapons for wvw.
If you do pve you get ascended armour and weapons for wvw.

How about retaliation returning 5% of damage done when buff wearer has minimal power, scaling to 10% with top power.

Sick and tired of every new power grind in gw2 having no realistic way of being overcome by doing wvw. Why do pve modes give much higher rewards? Why is wvw so poorly rewarded? Why should doing pve instead of wvw give advantages inside wvw? Why’s the design so bad? Why doesn’t anet care?

Sorry but you’re saying as well as having much more practise time to develop skills you NEED some lame stat advantage advantage as well?

How sad.

Waffler.1257:

Brando.1374:

I think people should stop complaining about gear in wvw.
this is the endgame for gw2, did you expect to just walk in and be the best?

I remember back in the day when players were the best at a game because they had superior knowledge, reflexes, and decision making, not because they had dedicated the most time to performing menial and repetitive tasks to make their character sheet have the biggest numbers.

People who have to rely on their grinded gear will often defend their grind as if it represents skill. It represents time spent, not skill.

Grinding the PvE BS requires more than my entire available playtime. I’d get no WvW at all if I do the pve crap. I wish A-net had actually kept their promises about avoiding being yet another grind driven mmo clone.

I have 3 ascended trinkets across all characters, zero ascended weapons, zero infusions and now I have a new grind for ascended armour to put me even further behind. Thanks A-net for the total U-turn on design promises regarding gear.

Please stop making content that has a big affect on WvW but cannot be reasonably gained by doing wvw.

After a set of much improved patches, sadly we appear to have returned to rushed/irrelevant/more harmful than useful patches. 2/10. disappointing.

This patch only reduces builds not increases, and does nothing to bring up underwhelming builds. Bomb heals are still missing enough range on the heal effect (and the damage effect)to hit most people moving around, it’s like adding fancy rims to a car with no engine, much like all the minor turret fluff that relentlessly ignores the core problems with turrets.

Whatever these “Core Roles of the Engineer” are supposed to be has never been defined by A-net, a major part of the problem.

Slapdash patch, fails to address any important engineer issues, does the opposite of it’s stated aims in several cases.

Do try and join your servers voice comms, it makes wvw so much easier to learn.